FISH AND FISHING IN THE INLE LAKE. 
1039 
unlike that of small pike, they are probably both predaceous and voracious. 
Here and there smgle individuals of the Burmese Red-Fimied Barbel (Barbus 
earana caudimarginatus) may be seen, but apart from the Herrmg Barbel. 
With the young Herring Barbel, but not mixing with them, are still larger shoals 
-of a smaller but more beautiful fish. Like the AssjTian host, its “ cohorts are 
gleaming vdth purple and gold.” Its sides are golden, its beUy silver, and on 
its sides are numerous bands of deep purple-blue. This fish is imknown 
outside the Inle Lake -system. To it has been granted the name Barilius auro- 
purpureus. Its shoals have the habit of conglomerating from time to time 
.into great spheres of living units a short distance below the surface. More of a 
surface fish than the Herrmg Barbel, the Golden Sprat Barbel, (as it may be called 
familiarly), feeds mainly on the small may-flies and caddis-flies and gnats (fortu- 
nately not mosquitoes) that rise from the lake in countless thousands every 
evening. It does not, however, ignore the attraction of the kitchen perched 
above its abode. In the heat of the day it goes to the bottom and may there be 
seen through the glassy water, eight feet dowm, tugging worms and insect-larvse 
from the mud, a task for which its upwardly dii’ected mouth is ill-adapted. It 
has to lie well over on its side to get a grip and often turns completely upside 
down in its struggles. 
In the weeds skulks the Small Burmese Murrel (Ophiocephalus harcourt 
butleri), a voracious fish, and occasionally a Shan Carp (Cyprinus carpio intha), 
a fish which lives by “ suction ” from the mud of the bottom. In the He-Ho 
plain, which lies to the east of the Lile Lake and eight hundred feet higher but 
belongs to the same lake-system, the Carp (Cyprinus carpio) apparently reaches 
the western limits of its range in southern Asia. It is on the Shan plateau from 
He-Ho eastwards that the local race (intha) has become differentiated. La the 
weeds also five shoals of two other fish, both smaller than the English Minnow, 
both confined to the lake and its connected waters, both of gorgeous colom-ation 
and both belonging to small genera of limited tange. Both are highly pecuhar 
representatives of the carp family and both are remarkable not only for their 
small size and brilliant tuits but also for their large eyes. This last feature is 
characteristic of the fish-famia of the lake, in the clear water of which barbels 
and other tactile organs are rarely well-developed, while full advantage is taken 
of the high visibfiity in the strong development of organs of vision. The two 
little fish have been called Saubwa resplendens and Microrasbora rubescens. We 
may refer to them here as the Naked Minnowlet and the Red-headed Minnowlet. 
The former is unique in the carp family in that it has completely lost its scales. 
In the male the sides of the body are of an intense steely blue, while the head 
and the impaired fins are of the most brilliant scarlet. The female, though more 
moderately garbed has a fine silvery sheen. The Red-headed Miimowlet pos- 
sesses scales and is less abnormal in other respects. In both sexes the sides and 
lower parts of the head are orange -scarlet, while in the breeding male the whole 
body is suffused with the same bright hue. Neither of these fishes ever gi-ow 
much more than an inch long. 
Yet another little fish, even more abnormal than either of the Minnowlets, is 
also to be foimd, single and not in shoals, among the weeds under the bungalow, 
namely Chaudhuria caudata — a speeies so peculiar that it has been found 
necessary to propose a new family for its recognition. It is a little eel-like, or 
rather worm-like, creature, which does not gi'ow much more than two and a half 
inches long. Small size, as well as large eyes and bright colours (neither of which 
■Chaudhuria possesses), is charaeteristic generally of the fish of the lake. 
Of the fish that live under and around the lake bungalow, I have left to the 
last the one that is most peculiar in habits. To it the Intha or “Sons of the Lake” 
have given a name which means the “fish that climbs the posts of houses”. Its 
scientific name is Discognathus (or Garra) gravelyi. Both its Intha name and the 
;generic name by which it is most generally knoivn refer to obvious phvsical or 
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